Digital camera users often desire to share their electronically-stored digital photographs with a group of people so that the group can select which photographs to print. However, current methods for group selection of digital photographs for printing either require special equipment and/or are cumbersome and inconvenient. For example, personal computers can be used to select which photos and how many to print, but these methods are cumbersome in a social setting because many people must crowd around a PC monitor to view the photos, with one person sitting between the group and monitor to control the photo selecting software application using keyboard or mouse.
As another example, digital photos can be viewed on some TVs, but not easily selected for printing. Instead, viewers must write down which photos to print, and then later input the desired photo numbers into a photo printer. Specialized digital photograph viewing and printing devices have been provided, but apart from requiring the use of specialized equipment, on these devices viewers cannot winnow the displayed photos down to only the subset that has been selected for printing. Being able to display only those photos that have already been selected for printing is something that users often wish to do, to modify the subset to be printed even further.
In addition to the above methods, the present invention recognizes that a digital camera can be connected to a TV and photos within the camera selected for printing using the camera itself independently of the TV, but this again impedes easy group selection and further does not permit viewing photos that previously might have been edited on a PC, a common situation to either fix/crop photos for printing, or to rename them to meaningful names. Also, like the specialized viewing equipment mentioned above, current methods for displaying digital photographs on a television do not permit viewing only the subset of photos that have been designated for printing to further refine the selections to be printed.